Translation is more than just converting words from one language to another—it’s an art that bridges cultures, ideas, and emotions. To celebrate this unique craft, we’ve gathered 41 inspirational quotes that highlight the power and beauty of translation. Whether you’re a professional translator, a language enthusiast, or simply curious about the magic behind the scenes, these quotes offer insight and motivation to appreciate the vital role translation plays in connecting the world.
1. “Translation is at best an echo.” - George Borrow
2. “There can never be an absolutely final translation.” - Robert M. Grant
3. “[...] it is safer to wander without a guide through an unmapped country than to trust completely a map traced by men who came only as tourists and often with biased judgement. ” - Marie-Louise Sjoestedt
4. “Imagination is a very high sort of seeing, which does not come by study, but by the intellect being where and what it sees, by sharing the path, or circuits of things through forms, and so making them translucid to others.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson
5. “So many people consider their work a daily punishment. Whereas I love my work as a translator. Translation is a journey over a sea from one shore to the other. Sometimes I think of myself as a smuggler: I cross the frontier of language with my booty of words, ideas, images, and metaphors.” - Amara Lakhous
6. “Let not the rash marble riskgarrulous breaches of oblivion's omnipotence,in many words recallingname, renown, events, birthplace.All those glass jewels are best left in the dark.Let not the marble say what men do not.The essentials of the dead man's life--the trembling hope,the implacable miracle of pain, the wonder of sensual delight--will abide forever.Blindly the uncertain soul asks to continuewhen it is the lives of others that will make that happen,as you yourself are the mirror and imageof those who did not live as long as youand others will be (and are) your immortality on earth.” - Jorge Luis Borges
7. “Seperti halnya seni, yang kata orang adalah dusta yang kudus, karya terjemahan pun kadang harus berkhianat untuk menunjukkan kesuciannya.” - Bahterawan
8. “Oh, no-" They weren't even on the runway, and Jonah's father was already immersed in his BlackBerry. "Remember those 'Live Large with the Wiz Generation' posters? Well, guess how that translates into Chinese- 'Jonah Wizard Makes Your Ancestors Fat'.” - Gordon Korman
9. “But then it came time for me to make my journey—into America. [... N]o coincidence that my first novel is called Americana. That became my subject, the subject that shaped my work. When I get a French translation of one of my books that says 'translated from the American', I think, 'Yes, that's exactly right.” - Don DeLillo
10. “When I work, I'm just translating the world around me in what seems to be straightforward terms. For my readers, this is sometimes a vision that's not familiar. But I'm not trying to manipulate reality. This is just what I see and hear.” - Don DeLillo
11. “It is the task of the translator to release in his own language that pure language that is under the spell of another, to liberate the language imprisoned in a work in his re-creation of that work.” - Walter Benjamin
12. “The word 'translation' comes, etymologically, from the Latin for 'bearing across'. Having been borne across the world, we are translated men. It is normally supposed that something always gets lost in translation; I cling, obstinately to the notion that something can also be gained.” - Salman Rushdie
13. “The night is a strawberry.” - Louise Penny
14. “For me, therapy is partly translation therapy, the talking cure a second-language cure. My going to a shrink is, among other things, a rite of initiation: initiation into the language of the subculture within which I happen to live, into a way of explaining myself to myself. But gradually, it becomes a project of translating backward. The way to jump over my Great Divine is to crawl backward over it in English. It's only when I retell my whole story, back to the beginning, and from the beginning onward, in one language, that I can reconcile the voices within me with each other; it is only then that the person who judges the voices and tells the stories begins to emerge.” - Eva Hoffman
15. “The original language of Christianity is translation.” - Lamin Sanneh
16. “One of the others shouted a translation: "The beautiful couple is beautiful.” - John Green, The Fault In Our Stars
17. “Semua tahu, Sayang...agar nasib baik tetap langgeng, kerendahan hati harus selalu dipelihara. Tidak peduli keajaiban apa yang dihadiahkan hidup padamu, jangan pernah membual tentang itu.” - Kavita Daswani
18. “Reading a poem in translation," wrote Bialek, "is like kissing a woman through a veil"; and reading Greek poems, with a mixture of katharevousa and the demotic, is like kissing two women. Translation is a kind of transubstantiation; one poem becomes another. You choose your philosophy of translation just as you choose how to live: the free adaptation that sacrifices detail to meaning, the strict crib that sacrifices meaning to exactitude. The poet moves from life to language, the translator moves from language to life; both like the immigrant, try to identify the invisible, what's between the lines, the mysterious implications.” - Anne Michaels
19. “I emphasize the distinction between brackets and no brackets because it will affect your reading experience, if you will allow it. Brackets are exciting. Even though you are approaching Sappho in translation, that is no reason you should miss the drama of trying to read a papyrus torn in half or riddled with holes or smaller than a postage stamp--brackets imply a free space of imaginal adventure.” - Anne Carson
20. “A satisfactory translation is not always possible, but a good translator is never satisfied with it. It can usually be improved. (Newmark)” - Peter Newmark
21. “There is no such thing as a perfect, ideal, or 'correct' translation. A translator is always trying to extend his knowledge and improve his means of expression; he is always pursuing facts and words.” - Peter Newmark
22. “Translation is a two-edged instrument: it has the special purpose of demonstrating the learner's knowledge of the foreign language, either as a form of control or to exercise his intelligence in order to develop his competence.” - Peter Newmark
23. “I think the Greek New Testament is the strongest and most successful misreading of a great prior text in the entire history of influence.” - Harold Bloom
24. “Prowling the meanings of a word, prowling the history of a person, no use expecting a flood of light. Human words have no main switch. But all those little kidnaps in the dark. And then the luminous, big, shivering, discandied, unrepentant, barking web of them that hangs in your mind when you turn back to the page you were trying to translate...” - Anne Carson
25. “The Bible has been through at least half a dozen translations by the time you read it. Plus, when the word of God is infected by the hand of man, that is, written down, it is tainted.” - Craig Ferguson
26. “¡Dios bendiga los tiempos antiguos, en que existían cosas raras...!” - Knut Hamsun
27. “Fragments of a vessel which are to be glued together must match one another in the smallest details, although they need not be like one another. In the same way a translation, instead of resembling the meaning of the original, must lovingly and in detail incorporate the original's mode of signification, thus making both the original and the translation recognizable as fragments of a greater language, just as fragments are part of a vessel.” - Walter Benjamin
28. “Det var det der holdt mig vågen om natten," sagde Walter. "Den her opsplitning af landet. For det er det samme problem overalt. Det er ligesådan med internettet eller kabel-tv - der er aldrig noget centrum, der er ingen fælles enighed, der er bare en billion forskellige distraherende støjkilder. Vi kan aldrig sætte os og føre en vedvarende samtale, det er bare billigt skrammel og en lorteudvikling, det hele. Alt det ægte, alt det autentiske, alt det ærlige dør ud. Intellektuelt og kulturelt bliver vi kastet omkring som tilfældige billiardkugler og reagerer på den seneste tilfældige stimulans.” - Jonathan Franzen
29. “Du skal bare huske at det ikke er en perfekt krig i en perfekt verden.” - Jonathan Franzen
30. “The world cannot be translated; It can only be dreamed of and touched.” - Dejan Stojanovic
31. “The first rule of translation: make sure you know at least one of the bloody languages!” - Faiz Ahmed Faiz
32. “A translator, caught in the space between two tongues. Such people tend to come a little bit unglued from the task of trying to convey meaning from one code to the other. The transfer is never safe, the meaning changes in the channel — becomes tinted, adulterated, absurd, stronger.” - Elena Mauli Shapiro
33. “Love and translation look alike in their grammar. To love someone implies transforming their words into ours. Making an effort to understand the other person and, inevitably, to misinterpret them. To construct a precarious language together.” - Andres Neuman
34. “Poetry translation is like playing a piano sonata on a trombone.” - Nataly Kelly
35. “Translation software is not making translators obsolete. Has medical diagnostic software made doctors obsolete?” - Nataly Kelly
36. “Not everyone who knows how to write can be a writer. Not everyone who knows two languages can be a translator.” - Nataly Kelly
37. “To deny access to translation and interpreting services oppresses human rights and violates laws.” - Nataly Kelly
38. “In Iraq, interpreters were ten times more likely to be killed than were U.S. troops.” - Nataly Kelly
39. “Goddess of song, teach me the storyof a hero.” - The Odyssey Oxford World Classics Ed.
40. “And on the subject of naming animals, can I just say how happy I was to discover that the word yeti, literally translated, apparently means "that thing over there." ("Quick, brave Himalayan Guide - what's that thing over there?""Yeti.""I see.")” - Neil Gaiman
41. “On Translating Eugene Onegin 1What is translation? On a platterA poet's pale and glaring head,A parrot's screech, a monkey's chatter,And profanation of the dead.The parasites you were so hard onAre pardoned if I have your pardon,O, Pushkin, for my stratagem:I traveled down your secret stem,And reached the root, and fed upon it;Then, in a language newly learned,I grew another stalk and turnedYour stanza patterned on a sonnet,Into my honest roadside prose--All thorn, but cousin to your rose.2Reflected words can only shiverLike elongated lights that twistIn the black mirror of a riverBetween the city and the mist.Elusive Pushkin! Persevering,I still pick up Tatiana's earring,Still travel with your sullen rake.I find another man's mistake,I analyze alliterationsThat grace your feasts and haunt the greatFourth stanza of your Canto Eight.This is my task--a poet's patienceAnd scholastic passion blent:Dove-droppings on your monument.” - Vladimir Nabokov
